Booked at the Library since 1972

Friday

Oct 15, 2010 at 2:00 AM

She once had to make a career decision: did she want to work with figures (an offer to advance in the insurance industry), or with people (like the helpful librarian she remembered from her childhood)?

Ellen Chahey

Ellen C. Chahey photo

TOWARD THE FUTURE – Carol Saunders poses with a painting by Nancy Devine that will be raffled during “The Main Event,” a library fundraiser on November 6.

Interim Hyannis director a familiar face

She once had to make a career decision: did she want to work with figures (an offer to advance in the insurance industry), or with people (like the helpful librarian she remembered from her childhood)?

“I opted for people,” said Carol Saunders, now the acting director of the Hyannis Public Library. Her decision brought her to the Main Street mainstay in 1972 and has kept her there ever since.

And Saunders has plenty of people. In just one hour this week, patrons were using every public computer. A boy returned a rest room key to the security guard. A woman picked up a special order, and a man wanted to learn how to use the self-service checkout. Staff members were having a problem with their computer system, and an officer of the Friends of the library stopped by to discuss a fundraising luncheon.

Soft-spoken Saunders deftly alternated between attending to some of these needs and answering a reporter’s questions.

In the midst of this busy scene sat a patio set, complete with umbrella. It seemed an incongruous reminder of a relaxed summer lunch.

But the glass-top table and its accessories were in the circulation room for a reason: to publicize “The Main Event,” a fundraiser at Tommy Doyle’s on the evening of Nov. 6 that involves a unique set of people.

The committee for the “Event” describes themselves as “a bunch of grown up Hyannis kids” who have organized to “raise money for our library so that future generations of ‘Hyannis kids’ will have access to books, computers and support of a village that places a high value on literacy, education, and culture – just like when we were growing up in Hyannis!”

As Saunders showed off the patio set and an oil painting by Nancy Devine that are among the donations for a raffle at the event, she praised the “great energy” of the 13-member planning group. The evening also includes performances by Lou Colombo, Freddie and the Maybellines, and Alan McGarry; hors d’oeuvres; raffles; and reunion with “old friends” who want to help raise $60,000 for the library.

Another group, the Friends of the library, has designed another style of fundraiser, for the same goal, for people who prefer a daytime event: a luncheon buffet and author talk at Alberto’s on Oct. 30. The speaker is Jenna Blum, the Boston-area author of Stormchasers and Those Who Saved Us.

Saunders is at the library’s helm after the September retirement of Ann-Louise Harries. “We are friends as well as colleagues,” Saunders said as she added, “and Ann-Louise is a hard act to follow.”

Saunders praised the library staff for helping her try. “They are really chipping in. This is a team effort to provide the best library service we can, A-1, 4-star service to the village and to the community as a whole.

Saunders comes to her job with libraries in her blood. “I was a lucky child,” she said, because my mother and father both read.”

According to family legend, she said, her mother “got good at reading upside down, propping a book on my high-chair tray so I could see the letters right-side up.”

As she got older, Saunders had just a short walk to her neighborhood library in Walpole. There, she got to know a librarian who “always took time to help me, and probably everyone else. She always made me feel special, so I’m sure she did that for everyone. When I got old enough to go alone, she’d always give me a stack of books to take home to my mother.”

Now Saunders carries on the tradition of helping library patrons. “We run the gamut of people,” she said of the library where she has worked since 1972, “people who want to communicated with loved ones on the other side of the world, people born and raised in Hyannis, visitors, people new to our country and its language and its government … we are cosmopolitan.”

When she’s not in the library, Saunders said that she likes to travel. She’s been to Europe and the American West, and has a vacation on St. Croix in the works.

She also relaxes by reading mysteries and thrillers and taking in the “great wealth of talent” on Cape Cod’s cultural scene. She volunteers as an usher for the Cape Symphony Orchestra, and especially likes to be assigned as a ticket-taker because, she said, “I get to see so many people I know and schmooze with them, even if it’s just for a little bit.”

During her tenure as acting director, Saunders of course wants to make sure that the Hyannis Public Library stays abreast of current resources. But she also expressed a more mundane – certainly urban – wish.

“I’d love to see more municipal parking. Sometimes even I have trouble finding a space when I come to work in the morning,” she complained, as she added whimsically, “Maybe we could have a garage?”

For the Oct. 30 luncheon and author talk ($30, noon at Alberto’s), RSVP with a check made out to Friends of the Hyannis Public Library at 401 Main Street, Hyannis 02601 before October 23. For “The Main Event” on Nov. 6 ($25, 7 p.m. at Tommy Doyle’s), respond with a check made to Hyannis Public Library at the same address.